Monet’s Giverny Gardens
© Meredith Mullins

Travel Inspiration for the Senses

Finding a moment of solitude in Monet’s Giverny gardens may not be easy, with the constant parade of visitors. But the colors, smells, sounds, and spirit offer travel inspiration of the best kind.

A visit is worth the investment of time, and the search for quiet and connection is rewarding in a world that inspired Monet’s painting for more than 40 years.

Once the selfies are done and most of the visitors have left in the late afternoon (or when you’re visiting in the early mist of morning), there is a magic moment when the subtleties and power of nature emerge.

Becoming part of the natural rhythms
© Meredith Mullins

Fish jump in the waterlily pond, as if they are finally free to leap skyward. Frogs croak in lively amphibious conversation. Birds dance across the now-less-traveled paths and come alive with song in the trees. And the flowers seem to be swaying in the gentle light.

This is a time when you can really look—when you can feel Monet’s artistic heart and soul and when you can sit, as he did, feeling the natural rhythms of the earth.

As Monet said, “The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration. I perhaps owe becoming a painter to flowers.”

The Clos Normand
© Meredith Mullins

Monet’s Greatest Masterpiece

Monet’s gardens were one of his greatest masterpieces. The two parts of the gardens provide different sensory experiences, different kinds of inspiration.

The flower garden (called the Clos Normand) near the two-story pink stucco house was an orchard and kitchen garden when Monet moved into the house in 1883.

Spring tulips near the pink stucco house
© Meredith Mullins

Monet redesigned the hectare of land into a garden full of color-themed borders, fruit trees, and thousands of flowers that changed with the seasons, including tulips, irises, poppies, roses, sunflowers, dahlias, asters, peonies, foxgloves, and many more.

The central alley is covered by iron arches where roses climb during June and under which nasturtiums begin their zealous crawl in July and August.

The grand allée with summer roses
© Elizabeth Murray

Monet was sensitive to the garden palette, but he was not a slave to organization and constraint. He let the flowers grow freely. He mixed the wild and cultivated, the simple with the rare.

In later years, he developed a passion for botany, and frequently introduced new plants into the garden. “All my money goes into my garden,” he said. But that is what made him happy.

The enticing view from Monet’s window
© Meredith Mullins

Ten years after his arrival in Giverny, he bought land across the road and dug a pond, in the style of the Japanese aesthetic he so admired. Because the Water Garden (Jardin d’eau) was fed by a stream from the river Epte, his neighbors were opposed, thinking that all the strange plants would poison their water.

Even in the rain, the Japanese waterlily pond is beautiful.
© Meredith Mullins

He designed the water garden with a Japanese bridge covered by wisteria and with winding paths of weeping willows, bamboo, azeleas, ferns, and rhododendrons. The famous waterlilies (nymphéas) bloom in multicolors in the summer.

The nymphéas that spoke to Monet’s spirit
© Meredith Mullins

It was with this theme of water that he explored layers of reality and dream; inversions; reflections; and the dance between earth, water, and sky.

Paintings that Come to Life

In Monet’s paintings, we can experience his garden in all its impressionist glory. When in the garden, however, the paintings come to life.

The many “Oh, I see” moments that are a part of Monet’s own discoveries bring all the richness of his artistry into three-dimensional wonder.

The paintings come to life when you’re alone at Giverny gardens.
© Meredith Mullins

As American artist Kathy Calcagno lamented after seeing a Monet exhibit at a museum in the U.S., “I remember being filled with longing to visit those flowers . . . to see the light reflecting off ponds and trees.”

Kathy fulfilled that dream as part of a June workshop in Giverny by gardener/artist/author Elizabeth Murray—who offered a week of visits to the garden before and after visiting hours.

Elizabeth suggests entering Monet’s garden in a quiet, respectful way, as you would enter a sacred space, such as a temple or cathedral.

Feeling Monet’s spirit
© Meredith Mullins

“This is when you can feel Monet’s spirit most,” she says of the garden, which she calls a family member, since she has spent more than half her life visiting the garden, photographing it, painting it, studying it, and writing and speaking about it.

As American Irene Patton noted after a week in the garden with Elizabeth’s workshop, “The layers in the gardens are incredible. Every day brings a new discovery. You have to be open and take your time.”

Many layers to discover
© Meredith Mullins

Preparing for the Moment

 One way to prepare for the multisensory experience of being in Monet’s gardens is to visit some of the museums in Paris that best represent his work.

The Musée d’Orsay and the Marmottan museum offer excellent collections.

However, the must-see museum is the Musée de l’Orangerie, with its installation of eight compositions created during the last 30 years of Monet’s life and inspired by the waterlilies and the flora around the Japanese pond at Giverny.

A (slightly distorted) view of Monet’s unique installation in the Musée de l’Orangerie
© Meredith Mullins

The panels were specifically made for the two rooms with curved walls, designed in the shape of an infinity symbol.

The 100 linear meters of Giverny landscape were intended to surround viewers, giving them, in Monet’s words, “an illusion of an endless whole, of a wave with no horizon and no shore.”

Monet offered this project to the French State as a symbol of peace on the day after the Amistice of World War I.

One of the eight Nymphéas pieces at the Musée de l’Orangerie
© Meredith Mullins

A Game of Faces

At the risk of being called crazy (again), I now include my own theory of the many faces of Monet. Over the years, as I meditated on the expansive panels in the Orangerie, I began to discover many hidden faces.

Do you see the self-portrait of Monsieur Monet himself?
© Meredith Mullins (Detail from Monet painting at the Musée de l’Orangerie)

Whether intended or not by Monet, the faces are clearly there (aren’t they?), although I have read no research about them. When I mention them to curators, they give me the knowing look of a mental institution guardian.

However, in the spirit of OIC Moments fun, I include photos of panel details and challenge you to find the faces.

Can you find the face in this detail of a Nymphéas panel?
© Meredith Mullins
(Detail from Monet painting at the Musée de l’Orangerie)

And, in the spirit of OIC Moments travel inspiration, I invite you to visit the Giverny gardens and to take time to smell and see and hear the gardens.

Monet’s life was a true collaboration with a living, growing work of art and architecture. We are privileged to be a part of his artistry.

In all seasons, in all weather . . .
© Meredith Mullins

For more information about the Giverny gardens, which are open from March through October, visit Giverny Monet’s Gardens and the Giverny Fondation Claude Monet.

For more information about Elizabeth Murray’s Giverny workshops and her books, including Monet’s Passion, visit her website.

Also, take a look at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Musée d’Orsay, and the Musée Marmottan.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.